FBinNY 

A visit to the hardware store and you should find naphtha, or products labeled stoddard solvent, turpentine or paint thinner (read the fine print looking for the phrase "petroleum distillate". Or you can use kerosene or diesel fuel (#2 fuel oil), or industrial suppliers stock a variety of "petroleum distillate" degreasers under various trade names.

There are plenty of choices, but these days the labeling has gotten confusing because there's a push to reduce the VOCs vented into the air, especially from drying paint. That makes this class of solvent harder to find. or at least better hidden on shelves in areas with air pollution mandates such as the LA basin.

Sadly, as Cycocommute pointed out, this has led to some very ungreen decisions trading low impact use of recycled solvents for higher impact use of things that get into the waste water stream, or ground water aquifers. If you use a petroleum distillate with respect, and save and reuse it as some of do, it can take decades to use or evaporate one gallon. Compare that to the amount of not so green stuff you'd send down the sewer each time you cleaned your chain.

cyccommute 

Mineral spirits come under a variety of names. You just have to know the various names. If nothing else, you can use "white gas" for camp stoves. It's almost the same distillate fraction as mineral spirits. Kerosene would work but, as others have said, it doesn't evaporate as quickly.

Whatever you do, don't resort to gasoline! Gasoline is specifically formulated so that it has a flash point, and ignited, at -40 F (same temperature in Celsius) Mineral spirits has a flash point of from 70 to 130F (20 to 55C). That means that it takes a lot of energy to get mineral spirits burning while it only takes a bit to get gasoline to burst into flame.

big chainring 

I'm not a chemist. The stuff works great. I haven't had any problems with it and have used it for years.

And you prefer mineral spirit/oil/grease soaked rags in your house?

loimpact

Hmmm......I'll check out white gas & see how affordable that is in comparison to WD-40.

And while I can't say I'll never use gas again as a solvent, I'll certainly try to avoid it......Though it sure is funny cuz I probably used gas 90% of the time to clean stuff for my old cars......(bearings, races, axles, torsion bars, steering boxes, etc. etc. etc.)........back then gasoline was the solvent of choice.

dscheidt

Coleman fuel is a mix of C5-C7 hydrocarbons. It's got a flashpoint of less than 0F. It's a very good solvent, but it's no safer than gasoline. (Largely because it is, essentially, low octane gasoline. It was sold that way until the middle of the 20th century.)

Kerosene is a rather heavier cut of petroleum, centered around C10, and is closer to what mineral spirits are. (many grades of mineral spirts could be sold as kerosene, but not vice versa) Odorless mineral spirits have nearly all the aromatics removes, are usually at the high end of the flashpoint range, and usually has no sulfur in it. Kerosene makes a fine substitute for mineral spirits as a solvent, though not so much as a paint thinner. Some keros may leave a film, but for something you're going to lubricate with oil, it wouldn't matter.

cyccommute 

Your ranges are wrong. White gas is C5 to C9. Mineral spirits (white spirits) is C7 to C12. Kerosene is C6 to C16. Those extra carbons have a huge impact on the volatility of the liquid. Just one carbon can raise the boiling point by a lot. For example, going from heptane (C7) to octane (C8) causes the boiling point to rise from 98C to 126C. Going from a C12 to C16 increases the boiling point by 71C.

I would also disagree about whether any of these mixtures are centered around a particular carbon molecule. They are all distillation ranges and the composition would depend on the amount of a particular molecule in the petroleum from which it is being distilled. Some crude oils have more low end carbon molecules and some have higher. Without information on the particular oil being distilled, it would be impossible to predict were the range is centered.

dscheidt

Going to admit you're dead wrong on the flash point of white gas, and its safety as solvent?

Also: white gas and good quality mineral spirits are products that sold on their consistency. Refinery feed stock changes, the process changes to keep the end product within the specification.

AnkleWork

Without stating a probability distribution those ranges are meaningless. Distilled hydrocarbon products do not have hard limits on molecular weights; rather, confidence intervals define the ranges.

cyccommute 

Yes, I was wrong on the flash point of white gas but its flash point is much higher than that of gasoline and the energy within the liquid is much lower than gasoline. White gas (aka naphtha) also has a lower concentration of aromatics...benzene/xylene/toluene...which gives gasoline its energy and vastly increase the toxicity of the material. I will stand by my statement that naphtha is a far safer solvent than gasoline. It's not as safe as mineral spirits but it's certainly safer to use than gasoline.

This is exactly what the point I was making above. The different solvents and fuels are ranges of molecular weights that come from the distillation of a material that has varying amounts of each cut. Refineries produce a distillation cut based on a temperature range but they have no control over the concentration of individual molecules in the cut. Saying that kerosene is "centered on C10" molecules is meaningless.

These solvents aren't made by blending alkanes that have 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc carbons in certain proportions. They are made by taking a temperature range from crude oil where alkanes with those carbon chains boil off. Kerosene boils in the range of 150C to 275C. The material probably doesn't have much C5 in the mix since it would have boiled off first. It likely doesn't have much C20 hydrocarbon in it either because the boiling point is too low to collect that kind of hydrocarbon.

Rowan

In Australia, the stuff is labelled as "Mineral Turpentine". I don't think I have ever seen true turps on the shelves here.

Diesel from the bowser is cheap and effective for any cleaning of chains and other components I want to do.

rootboy 

Interesting discussion. I use kerosene myself, despite the evaporation time. Outside only.
I'll only add one thing. Odorless mineral spirits may be odorless, or close to it,
but that doesn't mean it's safe to breathe. I use something called
Turpenoid in my oil painting and although it has almost no smell, it is still not good to breathe
and the lack of any odor can lead one to be somewhat cavalier about it. I know I am sometimes.

I would use any of this stuff outdoors. Of course. Though I do paint indoors.

loimpact

FWIW, I did pick some up at the Depot yesterday. They had both "Brush Cleaner" but also had plenty of OMS too so I grabbed a gallon. (Who knows when/if they'll take it away from there too)

I haven't had a chance to use it yet cuz I got caught up in flat-fixing (2.....count 'em....TWO flats yesterday) and then some yard projects so I'll see if I get around to any OMS cleaning today.

I advised my neighbor too if he had any stuff he wanted to degrease safely just cuz we both split the Blue & Orange box stores similarly as they're both close by & assume they both have the same stuff. (The Depot's sprinkler selection is sucking more by the day)